As an adult, Amy embraced the Universalist faith, after growing up in a home and a community that was "uncompromisingly orthodox", as she described in her memoir. When Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones of the Chicago Universalists announced his intentions to erect the Abraham Lincoln Centre on the city's south side, Amy decided to honor her late husband
by providing an endowment for what became the John A. Davis Guest Room. The Lincoln Centre was the Universalist's version, more or less, of the Hull House. The Davis guest room was formally dedicated in a special ceremony on May 26, 1907. The Rev. Jones and Jane Addams were two of the featured speakers that day.
The Abraham Lincoln Centre is still in operation today, but in a different location on Chicago's South Side. We wonder if the John Davis legacy still lives in the Centre's new facility. The original building was initially designed by the nephew of Rev. Jones, a young man named Frank Lloyd Wright, but the two could never agree on its external appearance. The design work was finished by another architect. John Davis was remembered for many years through two different posts of the Grand Army of the Republic ("G.A.R.") who were named for the Colonel. The G.A.R. was a Civil War fraternal organization. Freeport's Post 98, as well as Post 53 in Jesup, Iowa were both named "John A. Davis Post."
John Jefferson Davis
John and Amy’s son, John Jefferson Davis, also left an interesting legacy. John J. was born on November 2, 1852 and grew up in Rock Run Township. He enrolled at the newly formed Illinois Industrial University (now the University of Illinois) in 1868 and was the youngest member of the university’s first graduating class in 1872. He was a classmate of Nathan Ricker, the first in the United States to earn an undergraduate degree in architecture. After earning a medical degree from Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago in 1875, John J. practiced for many years in Racine, Wisconsin, where his mother lived after marrying Eugene Winship. In 1911, he retired from medicine to become Curator of the Wisconsin State Herbarium at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. John J. died of a heart attack on February 27, 1937. He was one of only two surviving members of the original graduating class at the University of Illinois.
John Jefferson's uncle, Samuel Davis, had indirect ties to the Illinois Industrial University, through his affiliation with the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society. On March 2, 1870 he was elected Chairman of the Society at a meeting in Bloomington, Illinois. The real purpose of the meeting was to express the Society's concern that the University had strayed from its original mission to "extend higher education to members of the working class." The University had been formed a few years earlier, and Samuel would have had fairly intimate knowledge of its teachings from John Jefferson's enrollment. The Bloomington meeting also included certain members of County Agricultural and Mechanical Associations. These two groups apparently had enough clout to gain the attention of the University, who sent its regent (President) John Milton Gregory, and horticulturalist Jonathan Baldwin Turner (both have well-known buildings named after them at the current University of Illinois).
The Weekly Pantagraph reported that Gregory pleaded with the group to adjourn the meeting and regroup in Champaign, where he could showcase the University. Turner, an advocate for the education of the industrial class, bemoaned the University forcing upon students what he considered unnecessary curriculum, such as "languages" and other studies in liberal arts. Samuel Davis mentioned that he knew of no "squandering money" or other improprieties, but did suggest "the direction given to study was not what the law contemplated."
Nearly 10 hours after the meeting began, a resolution was passed to "revise the constitution of the State", presumably to enshrine the University as a financial obligation of the citizens of Illinois. The Northern Illinois Horticultural Society probably didn't have the authority to amend the constitution, but one can always dream, right?
Marguerite Davis
John J.'s daughter, Marguerite Davis, became a research chemist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she co-authored a 1913 nutritional study which identified Vitamin A and Vitamin B for the first time. She would later inherit the home in which her grandmother, Amy Davis Winship, lived while in Racine. Upon her death, Marguerite willed the historic home to the Wisconsin State Historical Society, to be used as a historical museum. Neither the Historical Society nor the County of Racine wanted to develop the home into a museum, so they rejected the gift. The property is now a parking lot.
Mary Estes Davis
Perhaps the most significant legacy was unintentionally left in the history of case law by Mary Estes Davis. Before Mary died on April 8, 1889, she had been ill for some time. Her cause of death was reported in the Freeport Weekly Standard as "dropsy", which is an old term for the swelling of soft tissues (today, often referred to as edema). We don't know the extent of her illness, but about 6 months before her death, she was an invalid being cared for in the home of her sister, Permelia (Estes) Reed. In the weeks leading up to her death, Mary decided that Permelia should be compensated for the care she had provided, both in her own home and in Mary's home prior to the time they lived together. Mary had already established a will in 1887, which gave Permelia a 200-acre farm and some other miscellaneous assets. The rest of Mary's estate was to be divided between Permelia, and the two children of John and Amy Davis (John Jefferson Davis and Elizabeth Davis Wooster).
However, one week before her death, Mary felt she would not live much longer. On April 1, 1889 she wrote a letter to Stephenson County judge Edward P. Barton, asking him to direct about $2,000 of her bank certificates of deposit to Permelia. In addition, Mary had loaned two men (one of them being Judge Barton) a total of $4,000, of which she instructed Barton to take possession of the promissory notes and hold them for Permelia. These assets, totaling around $6,000, would be a gift to Permelia.
After Mary's death, the executor of her estate discovered that Judge Barton was holding the notes and certificates, and demanded that he turn them over to Mary's estate. Barton refused to turn over the assets without a court order, citing the letter Mary wrote on April 1st. The executor sued in Stephenson County court and won the court order. Permelia appealed the ruling, which was overturned by an appellate court in December 1889. The executor then appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, which upheld the original ruling of the Stephenson County court. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Mary's deathbed-letter was not enough to constitute a gift to Permelia, because Mary had not legally transferred the assets. Therefore, the certificates and notes became part of Mary’s estate.
Permelia still received a portion of the certificates and notes, as beneficiary of Mary's will, but had to share those assets with John and Elizabeth Davis. The farm she inherited was mostly in Section 22 of Rock Run Township, just north of our home. An 1894 Rock Run Township plat map shows this land owned by Permelia’s husband, Charles W. Reed.
Like her sister-in-law Amy Davis Winship, Mary Davis was active in the Women's Suffrage movement. In the book History of Woman Suffrage (Volume III, 1876-1885), a letter Mary wrote in 1877 was printed as an example of the "toils of circulating petitions" to draft equal rights legislation. Mary wrote of her canvassing the village of Davis and receiving the quickest "no" from a man whose business was furnished by his wife's capital and whose house was purchased with his wife's money. Susan B. Anthony, one of the editors of History of Woman Suffrage, added a footnote to Mary's letter, stating that she had met Mary as a young woman at a convention in Rochester in 1853. When she visited Durand, Illinois in 1877, Mary and Samuel attended her lecture and she remembered Mary from years earlier in Rochester. Mary had been inspired by the convention and joined the suffrage movement because of it.
